


and scatter me scross the sea

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2011 [4]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gross Imagery, M/M, Metaphors, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-29
Updated: 2011-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-28 10:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/307012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rory, Amy and the Doctor and all the pieces that make them up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and scatter me scross the sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quodthey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quodthey/gifts).



> **Prompt/Prompter:** Doctor Who, Doctor/Amy/Rory, Neil Gaiman’s [I hate love](http://thinkexist.com/quotation/have-you-ever-been-in-love-horrible-isn-t-it-it/347156.html) quote - For pocketwatchdreams
> 
> So there’s this bit in the quote, about losing pieces of yourself and how it hurts and I took that and ran with it. I hope you enjoy the story, dear. I tried to make it extra pretty for you.

+

When Rory Williams is eight, he meets a girl with hair like fire. He name is Amelia Pond and he loves her the moment he lays eyes on her.

He doesn’t know then, not yet, that there’s a piece of her missing. He doesn’t know what that piece looks like, what it used to be. He’s never seen it before. He won’t know to miss it until much, much later.

+

Amelia sneaks up on you. She’s sulky and bossy and proud and she insists on doing everything herself, which, Rory figures out, is because no-one else will do it for her.

Her aunt’s all sorts of rubbish, to tell the truth, and there’s no-one else. Well, there’s him, and he follows Amelia willingly wherever she leads, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

She never notices, unless she needs him to play Doctor. Not like other kids play Doctor, mind you. No. Amelia’s Doctor is a superhero from space with a spaceship with a library and a pool and the pool is in the library and engines and it crashes into the garden shed. Amelia’s Doctor eats fish fingers and custard, which makes Rory sick as a dog, thank you very much.

He doesn’t eat it anymore after the first time, but he pretend-plays with her for as long as she wants because when he’s wearing a tie and one of his Da’s shirts, she looks at him and he thinks she might love him.

+

Rory isn’t a brave boy. He’s not going to be a brave man either, later, he doesn’t think. He’s not the type.

But that’s fine. He’s sixteen and Amy – Amy by then - is lying sprawled across his bed, telling him what an utter tosser Jeff is, for cheating on her with Marni, of all people, how could be possibly and _argh_ , she screams.

He jumps.

Then he takes a deep breath and raises a hand to his chest, carving out a piece of himself – his heart to be exact – and offering it to Amy. He kneels next to her, bent over her, his heart in his hands and holds it out to her.

He says, “If you were my girlfriend, I’d never, ever cheat on you, I swear.”

And she starts to say something, something smart and rude, but then she looks at him at his hands, curled open on his thighs, containing a piece – the biggest piece – of him. And she says, “Oh.”

His heart slots neatly into place next to her own in her chest, he thinks, and then she kisses him and he has no time for gross metaphors anymore.

+

He figures it out, eventually. That there’s a piece of Amy missing. The doctors and the games and the screaming fits were a clue, but he really, _really_ figures it out standing on the village green, filming an impossible man walking his dog.

Because suddenly there’s Amy and there’s a man with her, tall and ragged and wearing a tie and a shirt and floppy hair and for a moment Rory can’t breathe. Not because his childhood hero’s just become real, but because Amy stands next to him and looks at the Doctor and there it is, _right there_.

The piece of Amelia Pond he’s never seen before, the piece he didn’t know was missing. The piece he didn’t know he needed to miss because she was fine without it, absolutely fine, except suddenly she glows, like embers in winter. She glows.

And Rory feels like the world is ending, a little bit, and not because it actually is, mind you, but because there the Doctor stands, a piece of Amelia Pond in his hands, and doesn’t even know. He doesn’t know and Rory didn’t either, never knew that the reason his heart fit so well in Amy’s chest was that her own was gone, cut out and given to someone else when she was seven and a madman crashed into her shed.

+

And then the Doctor disappears for another two years and Amy is suddenly _all_ loose parts, all pieces, and she spends weeks sitting at windows, staring into the garden. _Waiting_.

Rory hates her and loves her and wants to shake the Doctor, wants to shake him until he’s stupid and hands back his piece-of-Amy, but he can’t because the man’s not there and if he were, that’d solve the whole problem, except not, because.

So many Amy-pieces and Rory spends two years gluing them back together around his heart beating in her chest, around his breath in her mouth and his love in her ear. Eventually he steps back, carefully, so carefully, and the construct holds. Amy made of pieces, parts, driftwood and glue. A mosaic of a girl with hair like fire.

The first time she laughs again, really laughs, like she’ll explode if she doesn’t, is the day he asks her to marry him.

She yells and cries and punches him in the arm _a lot_ and takes the ring, takes it and holds it pressed against her chest and he didn’t think it was possible, but with the ring there’s another part of Rory Williams gone to Amy Pond.

Just gone.

But then she kisses him, kisses and kisses and kisses him and he feels something slot into the new empty space, something like Amy and fire and childhood games. That’s a piece of her.

That’s _his_ piece of her.

+

Of course, the Doctor comes back.

Of course.

And he takes all of Amy this time, all of her in his spaceship, and Rory is left with pieces and rubble and a man that comes jumping out of a cake to tell him he’s still, always, forever, second best.

Rory Williams. The boy who came too late.

And he’s still not brave, is still not that sort of man, he doesn’t think, but he yells at the Doctor, because he has to because otherwise he’ll do something ugly. Something he’ll regret.

+

Somehow, though, you can’t really hate the Doctor. Rory tries, Lord knows he does, but the Doctor is… he runs all across time and space with his collection of hearts, all cradled in his hands like Oods cradle their brains, like something precious and Rory thought he didn’t know, but he does.

He knows about every single heart he holds and about every beat it makes and every break it feels.

He knows. And he weeps for them all and that is why Rory cannot hate the Doctor. Because he never asked for Amy’s heart but he has it anyway and he’s careful, as careful as he can ever be.

So Rory swallows hard and runs along, runs with them, his hand in Amy’s and learns to see the world as they do.

He learns, he thinks, to be braver. To be fire.

+

The thing about the Doctor, the very worst thing, is this:

They visit a planet fifty-thousand years in the future and the Doctor gives a piece of himself to a little girl who asks him to help her save her parents.

A thousand years in the past, he gives a piece of himself to a species so vicious, their name simply translates as ‘The Teeth’.

In a dying space station, he gives it to a dying man and his dream of a bigger future.

They visit Wales ten years in the future and the Doctor gives a piece of himself to a woman who is afraid of losing both her husband and son, who does lose her father. And he gives a piece of himself to the lizard warrior woman in the cellar, who hates them with every fiber of her being.

The Doctor, Rory learns faster than Amy, because Amy doesn’t want to see, gives a piece of himself to anyone who comes to him, hands open, palm up. Anyone who asks, the Doctor will love.

And he loves a little girl he met in Leadworth and Rory knows, even though he doesn’t want to, that the Doctor loves a little boy with a big nose, who trails in the little girl’s wake like sparks trail in the wake of fire. Fire like her hair.

+

So there are pieces of the Doctor, brilliant madman in a box, scattered across all times and all worlds. And there are pieces of Amy and a girl called Rose, a woman named Martha, a man named Jack, buried in his chest, where they struck like shrapnel.

Shrapnel of love, sharp and brutal and beautiful.

And sometimes Rory looks at the Doctor, and all he can see are those pieces that cover him, from head to toe, in other people’s love and memories of him and he knows that somewhere in this mess, somewhere small and insignificant, a piece shaped like Amy’s heart is buried in his flesh and Rory fears –

He fears.

+

Amy sees nothing of this, doesn’t want to, doesn’t care. Amy just runs by his side and watches him give away whatever parts of himself he can still scrounge up and sometimes, when the adventure turned bad, when someone died – and someone always dies, because the Doctor makes people dangerous to themselves – she hugs him and kisses his forehead and passes over another part of herself to patch up what was lost.

Rory watches and can do nothing, nothing but recite the proper procedure for the transplantation of human organs and count the beats of his own heart in Amy’s chest. He feels for his pieces of her, for the bits she’s given him. He traces the seams where they’re stitched into his soul with his finger tips and counts them all, one, two, three, many.

He makes sure they’re all there. Makes sure they didn’t grow less when he wasn’t looking. He wonders how many parts of Amy there are. He wonders if one day, she’ll be as tattered and scattered as her Raggedy Doctor.

He wonders if he could still love her if she were spread across the universe and then snorts because _of course_ he would, how could he not? How could he ever not love Amelia Pond, hair of fire, heart of a warrior?

+

Sometimes he wishes he could go back to how things were, before he knew that people are pieces and that parts of them get passed around all the time.

Before he knew that a piece of Amy was forever lost to a man with a blue box.

+

And then he dies.

+

The Doctor pulls Amy back, sobbing and screaming, fire extinguished by tears. He pulls her away from Rory – no, from the light. From the light that’s eating him, erasing him.

He can… he can’t remember so many things, but Amy, Amy, so much fire and his heart in her chest. He wonders if it’ll keep beating when he’s gone.

He thinks that his last thought should be about Amy, about how he loves her, how he regrets nothing – and he doesn’t. About how good it was, how there was never enough time.

It’s not.

His last thought is about the Doctor, who cradles Amy to his side and looks at Rory with wet eyes, anguish dancing in them bright white, like tears and moonlight. His free hand twitches at his side, as if to reach out, as if to pull Rory from the jaws of death and _keep_ him.

Rory’s last thought is the realization that the Doctor _loves_ him. Loves him, _too_.

 _Oh,_ he thinks, and then he doesn’t think at all anymore.

+

He doesn’t remember. Until he sees Amy – red, red, red, fire, fire fire – he doesn’t remember.

But then he does, sudden and painful, like a spear to the gut, a fist to the face. He remembers. Remembers screaming and trying to be braver, remembers wanting to be fire, remembers where his heart went and all the other parts that are missing.

Most of all, he remembers a seven-year-old girl named Amelia Pond who stomped on his foot in the playground and called him a poophead and agreed to marry him thirteen years later.

For the first time in what feels like a lifetime, he breathes and feels himself settle. He’s Rory. Amy’s Rory. The pieces fall back into placed, sewn in, stitched back up, glued together. Mosaic of a boy.

+

Only Amy doesn’t remember. The Doctor does, though.

Eventually.

He remembers and throws himself at Rory, hugging him so tightly that Rory’s armor just has to hurt him in all kinds of places but he doesn’t let up, doesn’t feel like he’ll ever let up.

“Rory,” he keeps saying under his breath, “Rory, Rory, Roryroryroryroryroryrory.”

“Doctor,” he returns and he can’t help grinning because Amy doesn’t remember him, doesn’t even _look_ at him, but the Doctor does. He’s not mad. It’s good to know.

The Doctor pulls back suddenly, already off on a tangent about miracles and improbable odds and Romans. He doesn’t listen, is frozen in place instead because in his hands, heavy and warm and alive, is a piece of the Doctor, one of the few left, and Rory thinks he must have had it the whole time, but he never noticed.

He stares at it for a long moment while the man in question keeps rambling on and on and on and then he carefully cups it in his hands, this fragile, tiny piece of Time Lord soul, and tucks it behind his breastplate to keep safe.

“I’ll take good care of it,” he wants to say, but then all hell breaks loose and there’s no time.

+

Afterwards.

Rory honestly didn’t think there’d be an afterwards.

He should have known better.

+

Afterwards the Doctor corners the newlywed Ponds in the wardrobe room where they’re trading tux and gown for jeans and skirt.

He grabs Amy by the hand and twirls her around. She plays along willingly, laughing bright red, all fire again, his Amy.

He spent so long without her he almost forgot, but it’s back now, like it was never gone. The timelines and lifetimes overlap and tangle a bit, but he’s got it mostly sorted. As long as his wife is willing to be his North, he’s got it sorted.

She bats her eyelashes at the Doctor and he laughs as he releases her and drapes himself over the shoulders of a mannequin. “The girl who waited,” he says, fond smile on his face.

Then he spins away from his perch, right into Rory’s space and grabs his hand, too, twirls him, too, and Rory finds himself playing along, too, finds himself laughing.

“And the boy who waited,” the Doctor finishes and then releases Rory, looking at them both. Looking like they’re the most precious things in the universe.

Rory looks back, at this man, this madman, this glorious, insane man, wearing his patchwork armor of pieces of other people’s hearts and souls, wearing a part of Amy stitched into his skin, right above one of his hearts.

The Doctor has been waiting, too, Rory understands, right there with his pants half-undone and hanging off his hipbones. He’s been waiting for someone to scream at him and help him make sense of all the parts, for someone who has faith in him when he has none in himself.

He’s been waiting for them, for Amy and Rory, together, not apart.

Rory smiles, soft and easy, the one he reserves for Amy, usually. Amy catches his eye briefly and he sees something bright in her gaze, something like _finally_.

“And the Time Lord who waited,” he says and then he steps up, right up into the Doctor’s space, while the man’s still dumb-struck and silent for once, and he kisses him because how can he not?

The Doctor has Amy’s heart and neither of his own, all scattered across time and space, he’s poor and rich and he’s wonderful and Rory has been shoving little slivers of himself in where the Doctor needed them the whole time, has been patching him up without even noticing.

That’s what nurses do.

There are pieces of Rory and Amy in the Doctor, pieces of him in them both, pieces of them both in each other. It’s a tangle, a mess, an accident and it’s not pretty.

It’s not. It’s a terrible thing, like a lost heart, lost kidneys, like death on a cold, steel table, all your organs failing. It snuck in and it pulled them all to pieces and scattered them so terribly far apart that they’ll never find them again.

Rory never wanted this, never wanted to be strewn across so many bodies, never wanted Amy’s heart in any chest but his own, never wanted the parts he has of the Doctor, those sharp, jagged things that dig into the tender places of his soul.

He never wanted this.

But he’s got it.

He’s got this, AmyRoryDoctor, all waiting for each other all patched into each other and he thinks that maybe he’s the bravest man in the universe, because he’s not fighting anymore.

He kisses the Doctor and the Doctor kisses back and Amy wraps around them, laughter and fire, and like this, all of them tangled together, they have almost enough parts to make a whole.

+


End file.
